COMMUNICATIONS

Here comes summer!

It is still June, but today they say the temperature will rise to 37 degrees. My hometown of Daegu is a basin like Kyoto, and it is famous as the hottest place in Korea. So much so that someone recently coined the expression “Daeprika”, a fusing of “Daegu” and “Africa”. You may think this means I am accustomed to the heat, but for the last twenty years I have been working at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, and until last year I rarely arrived in Kyoto until the lingering summer heat had dissipated.

I stayed for a year at Nichibunken as a Visiting Research Scholar. I pursued my studies, but I also had several significant experiences. In Korea, too, there is now a new emphasis on popularizing research, which means university engagement, collaboration, and contributions to local communities. My most enduring memory will probably be the short time I spent with second year students at Ōe Junior High School (adjacent to Nichibunken); our topic was human rights. This was memorable not just because I was doing something different from the usual presentations made to academics or the talks to lovers of literature. Rather, it was because the student representative who greeted me was a junior member of the table tennis club which I attended twice weekly. His younger sister was also a member, but she was a pupil at Katsurazaka Elementary School. During break time, the junior members gathered around, and bombarded me with innocent questions: “Why have you come to Japan, Mr. Su?” “How come your Japanese is so good?” “You must be clever if you’re doing research?!” Needless to say, that was great fun.

On this research trip, I spent most of my time reading early Meiji print media. I came to realize the appeal of irony, a rhetorical device that is not often used in modern Japanese. It makes me want to ironically articulate my gratitude towards Nichibunken’s academics, library, and administrative staff for their thoroughgoing support, academic and otherwise.
“You’ve done nothing at all for me, have you?!” (This couldn’t be further from the truth.)

Finally, at one Nichibunken event, a member of the administration asked, “How are we to make the case for the significance of the humanities?” The question struck home because in Korea, too, the humanities are in crisis.
With my departure imminent, the answer finally came to me:
“Just look at the Ne-agari Pine in the Kenrokuen Garden!”
What holds that gigantic pine tree up are the durable roots that extend deep below ground.
The unwritten rule: to nurture a magnificent tree, prioritize not the leaves before our eyes, but the roots sunk beneath the surface.

30 June 2025
Room 219

The author in his office at NIchibunken (photographed by a friend)